murder@maggody.com

by Joan Hess

  “Bad news,” I began bluntly. “From what Raz Buchanon just told me, he found that runaway girl’s body in Robin Buchanon’s shack on Cotter’s Ridge. His description sounded pretty damn grim.”

  “He have anything to do with it?”

  “I don’t think so. The little boy hasn’t turned up. I’d appreciate backup as soon as possible, preferably with as many dogs as you can get. Tell ’em to bring sack lunches, because we may be there for a long time.”

  “You reckon he wandered off?”

  “How should I know, Harve? All we can do is search for him unless you have any other bright ideas. Go ahead—I’ll make a list.”

  Harve barked something unintelligible at LaBelle, then said, “Don’t go biting off my head, Arly. Les and some of the other boys will pick up a four-wheel-drive vehicle at the state police barracks and be there as soon as they can. I suppose I’d better track down McBeen so he can have a look-see before we transport the body.”

  I took a deep breath. “Make sure the boys are armed. Diesel got hold of an unknown quantity of Raz’s moonshine. He’s apt to be a problem.”

  “Jesus H. Christ,” Harve said with a drawn-out sigh. “Anything else you want to add to make my day?”

  I decided not to mention Ruby Bee and Estelle’s purported whereabouts. Harve was having a bad enough day as it was—but nowhere near as bad as Gwynnie’s, if that was indeed who Raz had found in the dilapidated, bat-infested, decaying shack on Cotter’s Ridge.

  10

  The logging trail that wound up the ridge to Robin’s shack was no more than a sorry pretense of a washed-out streambed dating back to Noah’s forty-day cruise. I had no idea how close I could get, but I was determined to bounce off boulders, if that’s what it took. Without a doubt in anyone’s mind who’d ever set foot in Stump County (or any of the adjoining ones), Raz was a lyin’ sumbitch, but this was not the sort of thing he would have fabricated. The body could turn out to be that of a hitchhiker who’d somehow found her way to the cabin. It didn’t seem likely, though.

  The night had been cool, the day thus far reasonably warm. There was no way to guess from Raz’s description how long Gwynnie—assuming that’s who I’d find—had been dead, or how long Chip had had to wander off into the snarly, gnarly brush of Cotter’s Ridge. Gullies-and bluffs were abundant.

  The bottom of the car scraped every few seconds as I jerked the steering wheel back and forth. The town council would not be pleased when they had to replace the oil pan, and maybe an axle or two; repairs might cost three times my annual salary. Bluejays dive-bombed the car, protesting my presence. Squirrels darted in front of me in some sort of rodent kamikaze game. A crow watched as I maneuvered around a fallen tree trunk.

  A second splintery barrier ended what hopes I had of getting to the immediate proximity of the shack. I climbed out of the car, paused to allow my heart to stop pounding, and then began to hike up the road. Unlike the seniors in their L. L. Bean boots, I was wearing loafers from high school, although the value of their pennies had tumbled due to inflation. My feet slipped and slid with every step.

  It took me a quarter of an hour to finally come around a bend and see the shack. An idyllic rustic retreat it was not. It had been a visual nightmare some years ago, when it had been inhabited by the notorious Robin Buchanon, who’d supplemented her otherwise nonexistent income with moonshine and prostitution. She’d been murdered while hunting ginseng, and her brood of feral children dispersed to healthier environments. No one had ever asked what had happened to the scrawny chickens and rawboned hounds. The outhouse seemed to be leaning at a more perilous pitch than when I’d last seen it; a clap of thunder might be enough to knock it down. What had been a barn was a pile of weathered kindling.

  Bring your own marshmallows.

  The shack itself had not fared well. The door had fallen off its hinges, and almost all of the tar paper had blown off the roof. Weeds pushed their way through gaps in the porch. The steps had collapsed. Tattered cellophane triangles flapped in the windows.

  I sat down on a stump until my breathing steadied. I could hear a cacophony of birds, a truck grinding gears on the county road to the north, and a freight train in the valley beyond the ridge. As I listened more carefully, I could hear insects droning and buzzing.

  I could not hear a child.

  I wiped off my forehead and stood up. Even though I wasn’t into paranormal nonsense, I was half expecting to see Robin step outside and aim a shotgun at my face. She’d never taken kindly to unexpected company, unless it was a customer for either moonshine or her vulgar companionship. I waded through weeds, scrambled up onto the porch, and reluctantly stuck my head through the doorway.

  As I feared, Raz’s story was true—and there was no doubt Gwynnie was dead. Nature was already beginning to have its way with her corpse. I avoided more than a glance as I went into the back room, ascertained that Chip was not in a corner or under the remains of a mattress filled with bug-ridden corncobs, and then came back into the front room.

  A blue canvas bag had been tossed against a wall. I took a quick look inside and determined it was a diaper bag. I put it aside as I heard dogs barking. McBeen, the county coroner, could deal with Gwynnie, and would, in his own sweet time, offer a cause of death. Not my job.

  I went back out to the porch as Les, two unfamiliar deputies hanging on to leashes attached to slobbering German shepherds, and McBeen climbed out of vehicles vastly superior to mine. The dogs were in a fine mood; no one else appeared to be.

  “Did you ever consider finding a body at the Holiday Inn?” said McBeen as he wiped his face with a crumpled kerchief. “Even if you did, you’d probably drag it out into the middle of nowhere before you had me called in. Do you know what’s on TV this afternoon, Chief Hanks?”

  I glanced at Les, who shrugged blankly. “No, McBeen,” I said, “I’ve been too busy investigating a murder to flip through the channels.”

  “Baseball,” he muttered. “I hate football and I hate basketball—especially this newfangled women’s basketball—and gawd knows I hate hockey. I hate figure skating, too, and golf is about as thrilling as watching molasses drip out of a jar in January. I wait all year for the baseball season to start. I stockpile cases of beer in the carport. The first exhibition game of the season, I move the recliner smack-dab in the middle of the living room, and it stays there until the World Series is over and done. Mrs. McBeen usually finds time to visit her mother for a month or two. Can you guess where I’d prefer to be right now, Chief Hanks?”

  The dogs were snuffling excitedly as they came across the stubbly expanse, no doubt finding traces of crimes committed during the tenancy of the last five or six generations of this particularly stunted bough of the Buchanon clan.

  “What’ve we got?” Les asked me.

  “Gwynnie Patchwood, age seventeen. No blood or bruises that I could see, but I didn’t look closely. That is, after all, Baseball Commissioner McBeen’s job. There’s no sign of her two-year-old child. His diaper bag’s inside, though, and the story’s that she took him with her last night.”

  Even the dogs quieted down as we all looked at the scrub oaks, brambles, pines, and thickets of bloodthirsty thorns. Broken limbs splayed like drunken sentinels. Sunlight struggled through branches still clinging to dead leaves. Foliage rustled as some unseen animal approached, then realized its folly and turned away. A mockingbird trilled a repertoire of curses.

  “Aw shit,” Les said, pretty much verbalizing everybody’s thoughts. “You think to bring something for the dogs to track?”

  I shook my head. “No, but there’s a blanket in the diaper bag.”

  One of the deputies was hoisting McBeen’s fat butt onto the porch as I came back out with the blanket. “There’s most definitely a scent,” I said in what might be classified as an understatement. “Can you handle the crime scene, Les? I’d like to help with the search.”

  “You don’t have to do this, Arly.”

  “Yeah, I do. B
e real careful not to smudge any fingerprints on the pieces of glass by the stove. I have a feeling that when we put them together, we’re going to have a quart Mason jar.”

  “Moonshine?” wheezed McBeen as he brushed off his knees and struggled to his feet. “Bad batch? We ran into some last fall that damn near peeled the skin right off a couple of good ol’ boys. I’d hate to tell you what it did to their livers. I’ve got ’em in jars on my desk. Amazing.”

  “Just do your job, McBeen,” I said, then hopped off the porch and joined the deputies. “I assume Harve warned you about Diesel. He’s liable to come swinging down on a grapevine or screaming up out of a crevice. Feel free to shoot him, but try not to kill him right off the bat.”

  One of the deputies, who was perhaps a day or two older than the alleged age on my first fake ID, gulped. “You think he has the little boy?”

  “Absolutely not. He’s just been living up here so long that he knows the entire ridge better than you do your own backyards. He may be fine, or he may be totally out of his gourd. Aim for his kneecap, okay?”

  The dogs stuck their muzzles in the blanket, then began to drag the deputies around the yard in widening circles.

  Les put his hand on my shoulder. “Go on back to town. If the boys find anything, I’ll come and get you. We’ve got seven more hours of daylight, and I can promise you we’ll find the little boy if he’s anywhere near here.”

  “His name is Chip.”

  “Then we’ll find Chip. I’ve got a son not much older, and Deputy Phart’s wife is expecting a baby any day now. We’re not going to do a piss-poor job and then go for nachos and beer.”

  “Will you stop by the PD and tell me whatever McBeen has to say in his preliminary report?”

  Les squeezed my shoulder before releasing it. “I’ll either stop by or call as soon as I get back to the department. Sheriff Dorfer’s taking this real seriously.”

  “So where is he?” I demanded angrily, as well as unreasonably. “The victim is seventeen. Her two-year-old child is missing. Is he too busy pontificating to the press to haul his ass up here and do the job he was elected to do?”

  “Go back to town and see what you can find out. This isn’t a rest stop on the highway. She must have been told about this place.”

  I got a grip, albeit slippery, on myself. “I’d appreciate it if you keep me informed. Trying to get through to Harve is harder than making a long-distance call to Siberia.” I forced a smile. “Not that I ever have, of course.”

  One of the dogs took off at a clip, dragging its hapless handler into the brush. Obscenities ensued.

  “Probably a rabbit,” said Les.

  “Probably,” I agreed. I was about to set off, when something on Les’s body beeped. My eyes involuntarily checked the sky for the mothership.

  “Cell phone,” he said dryly, having noted my response. He flipped open a plastic thing, muttered into it, and then grinned at me. “Chip’s turned up at the emergency room at the hospital in Farberville. His diaper was soggy, but he’s unharmed. One of the aides has been in touch with the mothers relatives.”

  “Who brought him in?” I asked.

  Les conversed for another minute. “They’re still working on it, apparently. I need to catch the deputies before they stray too far. You can call Harve when you get back to your office. Someone will let you know what McBeen has to say.”

  I made my way across the sea of weeds, stopped for a moment to admire the four-wheel-drive vehicles that could surmount logs as if they were Tinkertoys, then continued down the road to my antiquated cop car and floored it all the way to the highway.

  Oil pan be damned.

  The answering machine was flashing as if every rat in the county was determined to sneak its way into my office. I took off my shoes and hobbled into the back room to scrape the gunk out of the coffee pot. The befouled beaches of Prince Edward Sound could smell no worse nor be any stickier.

  I started a fresh pot, then hit the button on the answering machine. As expected, the first dozen messages were from Ruby Bee, expressing everything from maternal apprehension to irritation concerning my whereabouts. Unlike Les, she did not possess a cell phone, so I con cluded she’d found a way out from under Lazarus’s trailer. One of these days I’d have to inquire into that one, I thought as I called Harve.

  “Well, you surely caused a stir,” LaBelle began before I could do more than identify myself. “Deputy Phart’s wife has gone into labor. It’s likely to be an hour before he can get to the hospital.”

  “Let me speak to Harve,” I said.

  “Why would you think he’s here on a Saturday afternoon?”

  My lower lip was beginning to throb as my teeth ground into it. “Let me speak to Harve.”

  “What did you find on Cotter’s Ridge? Was it that runaway girl? You heard that the little boy turned up at the hospital, didn’t you? The girl at the admittin’ desk didn’t see who let him off. He was right cheery, though, once they got him a fresh diaper and some ice cream.”

  “Really?” I murmured. “Harve there?”

  “Some relation named Leona went over to fetch him, just like he was nothing more than a bundle of laundry.”

  “Harve,” I insisted.

  I was almost sorry that I’d persevered. When Harve came on, he was so sputtery that I had to wait several seconds before he began to make sense (which is not to imply that he was making all that much). I did not want to think about what he was doing to the cigar butt clenched between his teeth.

  “I requisitioned two dogs,” he said. “Two! That’d be twice as many as one. You know how hard it is to do that? The chief of police was at his granddaughter’s birthday party at one of those places that serves pizza and blaring music in equal batches. He was right testy. The state police promised to send a helicopter up to Cotter’s Ridge, equipped with heat sensors and all sorts of queer military stuff designed to find Russian submarines. With my luck, they’ll come across a marijuana patch and take all the credit.”

  “Life’s a bitch, Harve.”

  He may have missed the irony. “Damn straight. At the moment, Deputy Phart’s wife seems to be having triplets, and her mother let me know in terms more befitting a sailor that it’s my fault he ain’t there. What’s more, I got an unruly mess of reporters outside the office, all clamoring about this missing baby. Soon as I tell ’em he turned up—or some mouthy hospital employee does—they’ll storm the emergency room. I told the Holliflecker woman to get over there and take him out a back door.”

  “Hardly his fault,” I commented.

  “I guess not. Les called in, said McBeen thinks it’s alcohol poisoning, maybe a suicide. It looks like she got so drunk she choked on her own vomit.”

  “How ridiculous is that? She makes her way to an obscure destination on Cotter’s Ridge, of which she has no knowledge. She carries her child, who’s likely to weigh thirty pounds, for at least a mile up a treacherous non-road. She proceeds to drink herself to death for no known reason, having chanced upon a quart of moonshine that conveniently happens to be there. Heretofore, she’s been a caring and responsible mother, but chooses to put her child in a life-threatening situation. Did she assume he would wander off a bluff? Is that why she didn’t pack any peanut-butter sandwiches? Believe in fairies, Harve?”

  “There’s no evidence anyone else was there.”

  “So how did Chip end up at the hospital?”

  Harve rumbled unhappily. “Guess you got a point. She must of handed him over to somebody. Why don’t you see what you can ferret out at your end? I’ll call you soon as McBeen has something more definite.”

  I slammed down the receiver and banged my muddy heels on the desk. Robin Buchanon’s cabin was hardly a popular tourist destination. It was possible—but not probable—that Gwynnie had stumbled upon it. Until McBeen came out with a preliminary opinion, there was no way of knowing how long Gwynnie had been sprawled on the floor.

  A two-year-old was not my notion of an ideal witnes
s, but I decided to find out if Chip had anything to say about his last twenty-four hours. He’d spent the night somewhere, and then been dumped at the hospital. Great-aunt Leona was not likely to be a nurturing support figure. But no matter what I thought of her, she was the next of kin for the time being.

  Life sucks, as Chip would learn.

  I drove to the house and knocked on the door, then leaned against the railing as I struggled not to envision what I’d seen. The image was nothing I needed to share with Leona. When the door opened, I forced myself to act like a cop.

  “Leona,” I began, “I have bad news.”

  “I didn’t think Chip was roaming around the hospital for no reason. Gwynnie’s a tramp, but she isn’t neglectful. Is she in jail?”

  “No,” I said, then told her about the body at Robin Buchanon’s cabin, skirting the graphic details. “The county coroner will let us know by the end of the day how long she’s been there, and give us a better idea what happened to her. I think we’ll end up with a homicide, though.”

  Her face turned ashen. “Somebody killed her? Why would anybody do such a thing? She wasn’t really a tramp, despite her Patchwood blood. She never hurt anybody, and she was determined to take care of her child. She could have just signed the adoption consent papers and walked away.” She paused for a moment. “Are you sure she didn’t kill herself?”

  “Chip was at the hospital in Farberville. He didn’t get there under his own steam, and he couldn’t have been there for more than a minute or two before someone found him.”

  “Was she—violated?”

  I nudged past her and went into the living room. “The coroner will make the determination, but I didn’t see any signs of it. Can I get you a glass of water?”

  “I knew something terrible had happened when that woman called from the hospital. Chip was just wandering around the waiting room with a note pinned on his shirt. Now how on earth would he end up there, all alone? Gwynnie wouldn’t have left him.”